Severe weather photos, videos, and random thoughts of J.R. Hehnly

This problem had me stumped for a couple of days until I determined the problem. I could upload images correctly, but I could not insert them into a blog post. After clicking on ‘Insert Into Post’ all I would get is a white screen with a close button. There were no error messages, and after closing the white box I would be back at the post, but without the image. I read about others having similar problems and tried various solutions that did not work.

These included:

• closing other open tabs in the browser
• clearing out browser cache
• clearing the link URL field
• making sure I was posting with an account that had ‘editor’ permissions
• disabling Wordpress plugins
• made sure I had the latest Flash version (I am using Flash 10 debug version)
• added an .htaccess file to my wp-admin folder with this code:
  <IfModule mod_security.c>
  SecFilterEngine Off
  SecFilterScanPOST Off
  </IfModule>

None of this worked, but I finally found the correct solution for my problem here.

All I had to do is log in as an administrator, go to ‘General Settings’ and change the URLs for ‘WordPress address’ and ‘Blog address’ to all lowercase. I had used some uppercase letters in those URLs and apparently that was enough to break the image uploader.

Here’s a radar question that’s been bugging me for a couple of years.  I have noticed that sometimes, as an outflow boundary approaches a radar site, the amount of anomalous propagation increases the closer the boundary gets to the radar.  Interestingly, once the boundary passes over the radar location, all of the AP goes away.

The best example I’ve seen is from the evening of August 30, 2008. As an outflow boundary approached KTLX from the northeast the AP increased significantly in most all areas around the radar, but was greatest to the south and southeast of the radar. On thing I noticed, though, was that the AP was mostly absent along the path of the South Canadian River at the southern borders of Cleveland and Pottawatomie counties.

I have two questions on this. What is the process causing the AP to increase as an outflow boundary approaches, particularly in directions opposite the boundary? Also, what process causes the absence of AP along river paths? Is it just the lower elevation associated with river valleys, or is there some other cause that is unique to a river?

If you want to view the August 30, 2008 event using your own software, the raw Level-II files (150 mb) are located here.

Here’s a java animation consisting of 40 radar frames from the event. Use the slider at the top to advance the frames and see the changes as the OFB approaches.

I grabbed the graphics from the SPC for each year’s tornado reports from 2000-2009 and put them in a single animated GIF. Can you see any areas where you are more likely to see a tornado?

Animation of tornado reports from 2000 to 2008

I know I should have used the java animator so you could pause, etc, but I didn’t have it available when I created this.

Enjoy!

See the difference???

This image is funny.

This image is racist.

Today is the first day this year I went to work without a jacket. It was already over 50 degrees by 8:30, expected to be in the 70s later today. I really loved the smell of the moisture in the air. What is that? Gulf of Mexico water? Moist soil? I don’t know, but it lets me know that spring is on the way!